Report On English Translation Of Chapter Eleven(part Ⅰ) In Zhongguo Shenmei Wenhua Jianshi: With Emphasis On Translation Of Culture-gapped Words

In the age of globalization today, each civilization is open to others and they communicate mutually with increasing momentum. Translation of works on traditional Chinese culture into foreign languages is a significant channel for spreading the Chinese civilization to the outside world, which bears the mission of constructing China’s international image. In traditional Chinese culture which is profound and has a long history at large, the most splendid part is the traditional aesthetic culture. In translating traditional Chinese aesthetic culture into foreign languages, C-E translation plays an important role. The Chinese scholarly book Zhongguo Shenmei Wenhua Jianshi explains chronologically the cultural resources of most aesthetic values of all dynasties in Chinese history in a multi-tiered and multi-dimensional way. With vivid illustrations,authentic descriptions and detailed commentaries, this book shows the essence of traditional Chinese aesthetic culture. Therefore, it is worth exploring how to translate the book into English properly. There has been no English version of the book available yet, so the translation and its related analysis will be original, significant and necessary.This proposed project aims to construct the English translation of Chapter Eleven of the book, which is “Huihong Zhuangkuo De Shengtang Qixiang(1): Diaosu Yuewu Shufa”(Tremendous Momentum in the Heyday of the Tang Dynasty(1): Sculpture;Music and Dance; Calligraphy). This chapter introduces the aesthetic cultural history in the High Tang period concerning sculpture, music and dance, and calligraphy. The text of the chapter, humanistic and scholarly in an essay style, uses and cites plenty of citations and culture-gapped words. On the basis of her translating it into English, the translator writes her translation report, including the background and significance of the project, the analysis of the Chinese original, the process of translating, and the analysis of some examples which are difficult to translate. To the translator, the translation of the culture-gapped words in the Chinese original is a difficulty and in the report, she dedicates a separate chapter of considerable length to the analysis on how to renderthose culture-gapped words.In the process of translating, as her overall strategy, the translator integrates the foreignization with regard to the translation of the original thought and cultural facts and the domestication for constructing a readable text as close as possible to the English academic style. The translator strives to reserve properly the value, belief system,theoretical form, frame of thought, and expression approach of the original text, and meanwhile ensures that the English translation presents features of English academic prose so as to be accurately accepted by the target readers. Concerning the translation of the culture-gapped words, the translator firstly tries to comprehend the words completely and accurately, taking their contexts into consideration, and when expressing this understanding, she applies appropriate translating methods according to specific contexts and translation purposes on the basis of giving priority to spreading the intended meaning of the Chinese original. She adopts some translating methods such as transliteration, transliteration with explanation, literal translation, free translation, etc.For the translation of some of the culture-gapped words, if there are established translations of them, the translator adopts them when proper as far as the relevant translation purpose is concerned.